The broad interest of this laboratory centers around building an understanding of the pathophysiology of human muscle disease in terms of biophysical concepts that are relevant to skeletal muscle. We use animal disease systems (hereditary myotonia in goats, hereditary dystrophy in mice, hypomagnes in rats and colchin and choroquine induced myopathies in goats) to develop and perfect techniques which, in turn lead to the development of hypotheses which are then tested in human subjects. Human disease syndromes that we have studied, or intend to study, include myotonia congenita, myotonia dystrophica, fascioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, hypo- and hyperkalemic periodic paralysis, central core disease, nemaline myopathy, and paramyotonia. The general approach consists of combining electrophysiological (cable properties, excitability, resting potential and voltage-clamp), ionic (ion and water content, extracellular space, potassium and chloride efflux), contractility and histopathological techniques in a correlative fashion.